MANSFIELD — Leelynd Leaf didn’t expect to see painted grenades when he walked into the Mansfield Art Center.
“It blew my mind,” said Leaf, a seventh grader.
He wasn’t the only one to marvel at the weapons of war wrapped in bright, bubble letters that spelled out the word “LOVE.”
About 40 students from Mansfield Middle School visited the art center last week to study the work of Ohio artists Leigh Brooklyn, Nick Stull and Steve Ehret.
Students also created their own artwork with stencils and paint, building a bulletin board display in the center’s classroom. Their work will remain up through April 16.
“I think they enjoyed it. We haven’t done anything similar to printmaking, so it was a little foreign to them,” said Brea Berry, the art teacher at Mansfield Middle School.
Brooklyn, who led the activity, encouraged students to tag their work by writing their name or a short, important message next to their stenciling.
“I thought it was really fun and inspiring because I myself am an artist,” said Janice Mattox, a seventh grader. “I really like to draw and also paint, but I haven’t learned this much about mural art and tagging and stuff like this.”
After everyone left at least one stencil on the board, some students grabbed pastel crayons and extra drawings.
“The ones that just went in freehand with the pastels, I think they really got into it. I think they liked the idea of tagging as well, kind of like leaving their mark,” Berry said. “These kids, they can really only do as much as other people allow them to.
“So being able to have a piece of them be out in the world, to be able to tag it in a way that looks good to them, and is left there, I think is something that helps them internally.”
Brooklyn also gave a presentation on the different types of street art before talking about her own process with students.
Her exhibit, Battlescars, The New Protagonist, is on display through April 16. Through a combination of sculpture, paintings and drawings, Brooklyn explores themes of strong women, social justice and empowerment.
Brooklyn told students she had her friends dress up in military gear for her inspiration photos. The series was inspired by a difficult time in her life.
“I needed a lot of strong women around me, so I decided I was going to build an army of women,” she said.
One piece, American Portrait, is infused with symbols noting mass shooting deaths in the United States. Another, Pieta, reimagines Michaelangelo’s sculpture of the virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus in a contemporary setting. A young Black mother holds her son in the foreground as billowing smoke rises and buildings burn behind her.
“I just happen to play with what’s happening right now because I feel like artwork should talk about the times we’re living in. It’s called art history for a reason,” Brooklyn told the students.
“Big things are happening right now. And I like to take that and interweave that into my pieces.”
Leaf said his favorite works were on the second floor of the gallery, where mural artists Stull and Ehret displayed vibrant pieces with abstract elements.
“The lady that was giving us a tour said (Ehret) did it free-handed,” Leaf said. “He thought it off of his head and I thought that was pretty cool. There was detail to it.”
Their exhibit, A Room with a View, also runs through April 16.
The Mansfield Art Center offers free field trips to all schools in the area, marketing and development director Jennifer Beavis said. The MAC has hosted almost 450 students so far this school year.
“We try to come up with fun ways to get them to interact and engage with the art,” she said. “This is a great group of kids. This is actually their second time coming in because they saw our exhibition calendar, and they saw this show and they said, ‘Can we come back for this?’”
Berry said she hopes the field trip will help students think about their own artistic expression and maybe even careers.
“They get a chance to see some artists, see some of their artwork and hopefully get inspired to do some of their own things or even possibly wanting to be a curator, working at a museum,” she said.
“It adds a little bit of infusion into the rest of the world. At their age, they’re so focused on their ids and their egos and what’s going on in their little bubble. It gives them a little taste of the real world.
